Kaiser plans health care for uninsured children

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, June 25, 1997

Kaiser Permanente has launched an effort to help mend the safety net for California kids by offering $100 million in health care coverage to 50,000 uninsured children for five years beginning in 1999.

The program, announced at a news conference with President Clinton at a Los Angeles school Monday, is an attempt to bring children into the health care system even if their parents are not eligible for the state-subsidized Medi-Cal program.

"Too many parents face the agonizing and impossible choice between buying medicine for sick children or food for their family," Clinton told hundreds of people at Mar Vista Elementary School in West Los Angeles. "We must do better, and we can."

Elementary school in Oakland opens time capsule from 1927San Francisco Chronicle

Brides of March walk through San FranciscoSan Francisco Chronicle

WildCare rescues Western scrub jay from rodent glue trapWildCare

The Regulars: The CarpenterJessica Christian

Kaiser, a nonprofit health maintenance organization based in Oakland, will provide subsidies worth $100 million over five years to extend benefits to uninsured children, according to Dr. David Lawrence, Kaiser's chairman and CEO.

"California needs a healthy, productive, well-educated work force for the 21st century, but millions of children and youth are at a disadvantage because they aren't getting proper health care," Lawrence said. "President Clinton has called for action on the issue, and as the state's largest not-for-profit health care organization, Kaiser Permanente is stepping up to make the first move."

Kaiser acknowledged that the program would involve only a tiny fraction of the 1.5 million or more children uninsured in California. The company has challenged other firms to also help uninsured kids.

Of the uninsured children, 835,000 are those whose parents lack health coverage through work but earn too much money to qualify for Medi-Cal. Another 630,000 are eligible for Medi-Cal, but their parents have not enrolled because of lack of information or language barriers, the company said.

Dr. Sharon Levine, an executive with Kaiser's Physician Support Services, said the state faced a crisis of access to coverage that harmed children most. Health insurance is "not a luxury, it's a necessity," she said.

Children have special needs that make health insurance all the more important, she said, citing preventative services including immunization. When children fail to receive the proper care, "their lives can be affected for years to come," she said.&lt;